Vol. 10, Issue 3 (2021)

Author(s):
Vinod Kumari, Subhash Chander, Jatesh Kathpalia and Bas Kaur

Abstract:
The women’s health and well-being has the direct bearing on the health status of the family members as well. Women are usually vulnerable to malnutrition for both social and biological reasons, throughout their life cycle. The present study was conducted to assess the knowledge of women about food and health aspects. A total of 120 women respondents (60 each from rural and urban) were surveyed with the help of well structures Interview schedule as per objectives. The basic difference between the rural and urban consumption pattern was that more respondents of urban were daily consuming rice (70.00%) and fruits (86.67%) whereas daily consumption of these items in rural areas was 55.00 and 65.00 per cent respectively. The pearl millet was mainly consumed by rural respondents seasonally (85.00%). The specific knowledge of respondents about food and health aspects was somewhat higher among urban respondents as 50% respondents from urban were having high specific knowledge whereas only 21.67% rural respondents were having high level of specific knowledge. The results indicated that specific knowledge about food and health aspect was significantly affected by education, service occupation, land holding, income, SES and mass media exposure. It was found that main health problems of rural women were common disease (51.66%), infectious (18.33%), chronic(11.67%), pregnancy and gynecological (6.67%), whereas respondents from urban area were suffering from infectious(47.62%), common (36.67%), chronic problems (20.00%) and psychological (15.00%). It is suggested that specific knowledge about health and nutrition aspects must be imparted to rural as well as urban women